Director of UCI Community Resilience Projects at UC Irvine Abby Reyes will discuss approaches to community-driven research, including the strategies, skills, and connections that researchers need to cultivate when considering their role in the research.

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Abby Reyes, JD, cut her teeth doing rural environmental legal assistance in the Philippines, her father’s homeland, and walking alongside the Colombian U’wa Indigenous pueblo for dignity against big oil, work for which Barnard’s Scholar and the Feminist Conference once named her a “model of resistance.” She now directs community resilience at the University of California, Irvine, where she supports leaders from climate-vulnerable communities and their academic partners to accelerate community-owned just transition solutions. A graduate of Stanford University and UC Berkeley Law, Reyes co-chaired the board of EarthRights International and is an advisor to the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners.